Why your website should be your most valuable employee

Any time you hire a new employee, there is a significant amount of risk involved. It is a costly, time-consuming process that includes interviewing, training, benefits, salary, and more—all without any guarantee the new employee will even pan out. Hiring the right people is obviously important for your company's success, but there's an even more important employee you're probably overlooking: your website.

If you've never thought about your website as an employee before, then you've been looking at your online presence all wrong. Your business’s website will exceed the production of almost any employee for a fraction of the lifetime cost (and with virtually none of the risk). Here is a look at why your website can and should be serving as your new most valuable employee.

Work ethic

Unlike an hourly employee, your website’s work ethic is not a variable. It doesn’t have sluggish days or bad moods or ego issues. It works as well as it’s designed to, and unlike an employee, you can easily make changes if it isn’t working 100 percent up to expectations. Have you ever tried A/B testing an employee’s work ethic? In our experience, it doesn’t work too well. Your website is a dynamo that never takes a lunch break. It doesn’t take vacation or sick days, never punches out, and is instead always answering questions, engaging customers, driving new business, and closing sales long after the rest of your office has gone home. If you spent less on your website than you did on your last hire, then you aren't investing your business resources in the right places.

Time management

Employees put a lot of effort into prioritizing and allocating their time to ensure the most important tasks get done during a given week—but it doesn’t always work. This isn’t as issue with a website that can automate tasks togenerate and nurture leads, drive conversions,analyze data, and more. Replies to contact forms can be automated along with messaging via your subscription channels, all set up to interact with your audience on a recurring basis. Your website allows your business to complete important tasks in an instant while storing all the data for future use. You’d have to hire several full-time employees to even get close to handling these tasks, but your website will do them perfectly without asking you for a raise.

Promotion

A well-designed website is the best representation of your brand, both visually and informationally. Everyone who visits your site immediately perceives your company’s culture and the value you can provide them. The website is a unified presentation of your brand that communicates the exact messages you need your customers to hear. You don't have to train it about your sales or marketing processes, but you can use it to help train your whole team. Your site also boosts your business’s visibility and reputation more than the best spokesperson ever could, driving the right kind of audience members throughSEOand relevantcontent creation. It’s the digital equivalent of having a million sign-spinning mascots spread from your front door to the other side of the world and back again.

ROI

Many businesses decide to go the cheap route when designing their new website, but if you wouldn’t do this when hiring a new employee, then you shouldn’t do it with your website, either. And if you would go the cheap route when hiring a new employee, you'll likely spend more in the long run fixing all the mistakes that person makes. Your website should serve as a tell-all information hub and a ferocious conversion machine, ideally combining the roles of brand ambassador and lead salesperson—without having to hire more people for those positions. Achieving this goal does not come cheap, but web design done right ismore than worth the initial investmentand produces ROI for years beyond the launch date (as long as you keep your siteup-to-date).

Create your next star employee with First Scribe

First Scribe is a full-service web design, development, and digital marketing agency that specializes in helping businesses turn their websites into their employee of the month—every month.Contact us todayto start making the most of your name online and turn your audience into lifelong customers.